ENTREGABLES

From a values perspective, understanding the process by which social groups experience disadvantage and how they cope with the challenges of such discrimination is essential for AOP. This requires a positive orientation towards those groups in society and the individu- als within them who may have alternative ways of viewing the world and who therefore may have a quite different understanding of what constitutes a ‘good life’.

Valuing ‘difference’ is therefore a complex process that requires social workers to be open to understanding these different conceptions of the ‘good life’. Unless individuals follow this path, their reaction to ‘difference’ is not to value it, but to either dominate it or exterminate it.

An example of this process of domination and extermination can be highlighted by the film Rabbit-proof Fence (Noyce, 2002). During the first half of the twentieth century Australia took children of mixed aboriginal/white origins from their homes, trained them in boarding schools and sent them to work in white communities. The majority of the chil- dren never saw their parents again. The purpose was to break up mixed families, civilise the children and absorb them into white society. Rabbit-proof Fence is the true story of three young girls who ran away from boarding school at the Moore River Settlement. Living off the land and on hand-outs, they eluded trackers and the police for months. Two of the girls made it home while one was recaptured.

A.O. Neville, then ‘Chief Protector of Aborigines’ in 1930s Western Australia, ordered the roundup (i.e. kidnapping) of all ‘half-caste’ (known now as dual heritage) girls (girls of half Aboriginal and half white descent) from their Aboriginal families for mandatory education into the ways of white society, leading to eventual low-level employment as domestic ser- vants. Neville was simply enforcing the ‘Aborigines Act’, a law designed with the intention of ‘salvaging’ ‘half-caste’ girls from Aboriginal life and integrating them into the white Australian world.

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White et al. (2005) looked at the effect that place of residence and individual socio- eco- nomic circumstances during 1971–91 had on the subsequent mortality (in 1995–2001) of a sample of men aged 26 or over in 1971. Some key findings include the following: • Neighbourhood deprivation in 1991 made the strongest contribution to predicting

mortality. For example, the odds of dying in 1995–2001 were nearly a third higher among those who had lived in the most deprived neighbourhoods compared with those in the most affluent;

• Social class in 1971 continued to have a strong influence on mortality risk in 1995–2001. For example, the odds of dying in 1995–2001 were 54 per cent higher among those in partly skilled and unskilled occupations compared with those in profes- sional occupations.

Comment

Comparisons can be drawn between the Australian government’s plan to eliminate ‘half- caste’ Aborigines through the dilution of their so-called Aboriginal genes and the Nazi policies (during the same time period) of eliminating minority populations (Jews, gypsies, etc.) through extermination. Other comparisons can be made between the Australian poli- cies and recent attempted genocides in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and, in the UK, the policy developed at the turn of the twentieth century of separating people with learning disabilities from the community by placing them in ‘special hospitals’ as the authorities feared that allowing people with learning disabilities to reproduce would degrade the genetic pool of intelligence in society.

Valuing ‘difference’ goes against common-sense socialisation which portrays difference as ‘inferior’ or deems it in pathological terms as ‘deficient’ as in the way Aboriginal culture was suppressed. Many disabled people who campaign for the civil rights of disabled people would make such a claim when they argue that many social workers have practised in a way that sees disabled people as dependent, where disabled people are assessed against the norms of the non-disabled world. Barbara Lisicki, an activist for disabled people and a member of the Disability Action Network (DAN) and who is disabled herself, comments:

It is absolutely crap for disabled people to attempt to fit into the ‘normal world’ and to live a ‘normal life’. We are not accepted as normal, but then nor are black people, single parents, gay people – there are so many exceptions to normality.

Normality is a myth. There is no substance to it. We are told to be part of this normality. If we want to change something we are told we have a ‘chip on our shoulder’. If we say: ‘I don’t want to make a fuss’, we are putting up with all sorts of compromises and personal difficulties.

DAN is really in your face. It is not about making compromises. Sometimes we are accused of radicalism. Tell me a better way. Nothing else has worked. We force people to have an opinion. We force them to discuss the issues. You will never get rid of impairment.

Even if you screen every genetic condition out of existence people will still have accidents. Impairment is a part of life. It always will be. The important thing is to remove the fear that surrounds it.

Like the black and gay movements we are saying: We are proud. We are what we are. You can’t change us. We have been ridiculed, separated and abused. We know that difference is hard to deal with. Black people were viewed as devils and chained in slavery not that long ago. We need to look at who has power and how they are using it? How are they abusing it? (Farnworth, 1997)

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From the brief description of the film above what comparisons could you draw between the actions of the Australian government at that time and other similar examples you might know about from history?

Comment

Lisicki argues that disabled people are different yet experience similar prejudice to other marginalised groups in society. She is concerned to challenge the notion that to be differ- ent is to be inferior. The casting of people as different from oneself into a subordinate status is central to the process of ‘othering’ them, the ‘them and us’ approach which places ‘them’ as the subordinate minority and ‘us’ as the superior and therefore normal majority. The ‘othering’ of individuals or groups withdraws ‘them’ from the circle of humanity and facilitates the denial of ‘their’ human, social and political rights. This other- ing can be overtly oppressive in denying access to services and citizenship or can be less visible where some groups, particularly disabled people, are seen as the objects of pity. This view leads to the added misconception that oppressed people are passive victims who are unable to act for themselves, something that DAN has challenged very effectively.